Examining the case for a basic income

A universal basic income (UBI) would guarantee every citizen a flat-rate, unconditional payment regardless of their employment status, which would not be withdrawn as earnings or income rose. Interest in and support for a UBI straddles the political spectrum, from socialists and Greens through to social democrats and free market libertarians. Reflecting this ideological spread, there is no single proposal for what a UBI is or should be for, what it would look like, or how it could be made to work in practice.

This project investigated what a UBI might look like in a UK context in terms of design; distributional effects; and the potential for mainstream policy adoption. The study sought to move forward the debate on the desirability and feasibility of UBI in a real-world, evidence-based way, subjecting the idea of a basic income to proper academic scrutiny. The research was conducted by Dr Luke Martinelli at the IPR, in collaboration with IPR Director Professor Nick Pearce and Visiting Policy Fellow Dr Jurgen De Wispelaere, and was funded by an alumnus donation by Eva and Van Dubose.

The research programme had a number of elements. Using microsimulation methods, the research systematically analysed the trade-offs involved in the design features of different UBI schemes with respect to cost, poverty alleviation and administrative feasibility. An innovation of our approach was to disaggregate work incentive effects and distributional costs and benefits of different UBI schemes for different demographic groups, for example distinguishing effects by family type, labour market status, disability status and sex. Our research also aimed to situate basic income within the comparative political economy and social policy literatures, by analysing the political and institutional factors affecting the feasibility of implementing UBI in different national contexts. We have conducted fieldwork in Finland, where a version of UBI is currently being piloted, in order to better understand the motivation for increased policy interest and the role of experimental evidence in advancing understanding of basic income’s impacts. Finally, we have examined the validity of arguments for basic income that arise from the perspective that labour markets are undergoing fundamental and irreversible structural shifts due to globalisation and technological change.

Seminar: Basic Income on the Agenda: Reflections on the Finnish Basic Income Experiment. June 2016. Research seminar presented by Dr Jurgen De Wispelaere, member of the working group on the Finnish pilot

Roundtable discussion: Basic Income: An idea whose time has come?. November 2016. Professor Nick Pearce debated the prospects for basic income with a panel of eminent experts in the field, in association with the Bristol Festival of Ideas

Workshop: Basic Income and the European Welfare State. December 2016. IPR Research Associate Dr Luke Martinelli and Visiting Policy Fellow Dr Jurgen De Wispelaere convened a workshop of international experts to compare the feasibility and institutional ‘fit’ of different basic income schemes across a number of European welfare states

Seminar: Maximal and Minimal strategies for Introducing a Basic Income. May 2017. Research seminar presented by Professor Michael Howard, University of Maine (USA)

Seminar: Squaring the Circle of Welfare Reform: Unconditional Basic Income as a Social Investment Strategy? Research seminar presented by Drs Jurgen De Wispelaere and Luke Martinelli at the University of Swansea, May 2017

Seminar: Money for Everyone: The state of the Basic Income/Citizen’s Income debate – October 2016. Public seminar presented by Dr Malcolm Torry, founding member of the Citizen’s Income Trust

In addition to these past IPR publications and events, our research findings have been presented at the international ESPAnet and BIEN conferences in September 2017.

The research has also directly impacted on policy debates. The IPR has contributed to a Labour Party consultation on basic income (March 2017) presented evidence at a Welsh Assembly consultation (July 2017).